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Job Centers See Crush of People in Need

People seeking work last week at the one-stop career center in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., which offers job training, listings and access to several welfare programs.Credit
Eric Thayer for The New York Times

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — They have little in common: Ron Jones, 52, short and strong, a union carpenter with decades of work experience; and Jerome Grant, 20, tall and thin, a Jamaican immigrant with a degree in culinary arts. But the economy has pushed them to the same difficult place.

On a recent morning, they sat across from each other at a one-stop career center here, feverishly applying for two months of temporary work with United Parcel Service. The pay was $8.50 an hour. There were 150 slots, and more than 300 applicants.

“You just hope you get your name called,” Mr. Grant said, eyeing the interviewers. Mr. Jones agreed, saying, “You got to get in where you fit in.”

If a fit can be found anywhere, it would probably be here at one of 2,942 one-stop career centers that Congress established 10 years ago. They each play host to a web of federal programs for the needy or unemployed, offering training, job listings and, in most states, access to welfare programs like food stamps and unemployment insurance.

Essentially, they are the emergency rooms of today’s sick economy — and they are increasingly overwhelmed. Just a few feet from Mr. Jones, Lequila McGauley, a single mother of two in heels, was also hoping for a chance to carry boxes. Gregory Sapp was learning to use a computer for the first time at age 52.

A few years ago, they were working. Now, with the nation’s jobless claims at a 16-year high, they are among the 20 million people expected to use federal workforce services in 2008, up from 14 million in 2005, according to the Labor Department.

Congress has extended unemployment benefits, which helps, but the Department of Labor also reports that this year’s federal budget for workforce programs was cut by 1.74 percent, to $3.7 billion, continuing a decrease of 14 percent from 2000 to 2007.

Economists say the full impact is easy for lawmakers to miss. Many people apply for unemployment through the Internet, cutting down on actual lines. And those most in need are largely invisible — unskilled, less educated and disproportionately black or from immigrant communities.

“It’s a mix of the most vulnerable and people who are in a state of shock,” said Lawrence F. Katz, a former chief economist at the Labor Department who teaches at Harvard.

Here in Broward County, the real estate boom was bigger and so was the bust. As a result, in the last three months, 36,000 people have come looking for jobs through the one-stop system, an increase of 60 percent over last year, while the number of jobs posted has declined by more than a third.

The number of families receiving public assistance has also jumped by 40 percent.

“The current state of things has affected just about everybody, from the lowest to the highest,” said Kelly Allen, a vice president of Workforce One, the public-private partnership that runs this one-stop and two others in the county. “And it really puts those folks who may have been on the edge further behind.”

The race to survive begins every morning. On a recent day, long lines started to form at the county’s largest one-stop office in Fort Lauderdale within an hour of its 8 a.m. opening. Dozens of men and women waited patiently, standing or sitting in blue chairs near a sign that said “America’s People ... America’s Talent ... America’s Strength!”

Mr. Sapp, working on an assessment of his current skills (graphic arts, no; finance, no), said he was hoping for an office job. He had worked most of his life behind the wheel, or at a stove. “I was a jack of all trades,” Mr. Sapp said, “but my specialty was cooking.”

He started to struggle in 2000, during the last economic dip, and in March of last year, he was let go from a catering company. Temporary jobs became all he could find: a swing shift working security; a Sunday missing church for a few hours of manual labor. And now, he said, those jobs had dried up, too.

“I’m just tired of sitting around,” Mr. Sapp said. “I’m used to being active.”

And then he smiled, revealing a front tooth like an exclamation point. When asked why, he said, “Things have to get better because it can’t get any worse.” He said that he was more hopeful because President-elect Barack Obama would soon be in the White House, and that he could wait a few years for the new president to “put in action what he promised the American people.”

“I feel blessed,” he said. “Really blessed.”

His positive outlook was all the more striking with additional conversation. Mr. Sapp, whose eyes brightened when he spoke about cooking, said he now went to food pantries to stay fed. His divorce five years ago left him alone, and because he could not afford to pay rent he lived in what he described as “a barter situation.” He shares with a sick older man and woman, cooking, cleaning and caring for them in exchange for lodging.

Others at the one-stop also said that cobbling life together with family and friends had become the norm.

Mr. Grant, who came here from Jamaica five years ago with plans to send money home, survives with the help of his girlfriend. Mr. Jones said he had gotten by since February — the last time his carpentry skills brought him steady work — with unemployment insurance, plus help from his 28-year-old daughter.

Ms. McGauley, meanwhile, said she could not survive without her sister and mother. “The hardest part for me is the day care aspect,” she said.

Her daughter, Janiya, 2, stood quietly beside her digging through a pint-sized purse. Like many others, they had been to the one-stop before. This time Ms. McGauley arrived around 9 a.m. to apply for the U.P.S. job, to be a driver’s assistant from now until Christmas. She waited several hours for an interview, and unlike much of the competition she had relevant experience. From 2000 to 2004, she said, she had served in the Army working on supply logistics. She also worked part time for DHL before being let go in July.

She said she would prefer a full-time job, doing just about anything. But she also acknowledged the reality. Unemployment among blacks like herself, Mr. Jones, Mr. Grant, Mr. Sapp and nearly every other customer in the Fort Lauderdale one-stop reached 11.1 percent in October, far above the national average of 6.5 percent.

The Princeton scholar Cornel West, who is black, highlighted such figures in a recent appearance at the Miami book fair, noting that the election of Mr. Obama could not make the nation “post-racial” or “race transcendent” when such disparities still existed.

But like many others here, Ms. McGauley had more immediate concerns — her expectations more kitchen table than ivory tower. “I just want to pay a bill, and get some Christmas gifts,” she said. A few weeks out was as far ahead as she could see. “I just want to get to next year and say, ‘O.K., it’s time to start over,’ ” she said. “I just got to keep going until then.”

Later on, she said she had started receiving a little help from the government; $336 a month in food stamps since June. But that was it — no unemployment, no cash assistance. Like millions of other Americans coming through one-stop centers across the country, she said she really just wanted work.

Her interview with the U.P.S. recruiter seemed to go well. So did the interviews for Mr. Jones and Mr. Grant, who left with a smile as bright as his sunshine-yellow shirt. “I got a 30-70 chance,” he said, seeming to stand taller. “Seventy percent I’ll get it.”

The recruiters told them that a background check would be completed quickly and that they would be notified in the next few days if they were hired. Ms. McGauley said she was told to be ready to work as of the following Monday, and initially she said she felt sure that she would get the job. But it was the 30th position she had applied for since early November, and the longer she waited without getting a call, the less sure she felt.

“I’m kind of skeptical now,” Ms. McGauley said a few days after applying. “I’m going to check out another job at Home Depot.”

A version of this article appears in print on , on page A13 of the New York edition with the headline: Job Centers See Crush Of People In Need. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe